Saturday, November 17, 2007

Cornelia Sollfrank

“Currently most women seem to prefer to undertake politically engaged work in a purely cultural environment and on a non-technological level. Women are not actively influencing the development of hard- and software, and therefore are surrendering any chance to share the related power. The question is, whether cultural/ aesthetic practice alone can sufficiently affect technological development, or whether women finally will have to get their hands dirty with technology. We have to ask ourselves questions like "How deep do we have to get into technology in order to be able to handle it consciously and be able to influence technological developments?" and "What prevents us from just going for it?" and "Does cyberfeminism necessarily require technical competence, or is it sufficient to theorize about technology and to focus on the social, cultural and political aspects of new technologies?" Cornelia Sollfrank (1999), http://www.obn.org/hackers/text1.htm

Her comments raise important questions about the use of art to explore an open source paradigm... Any thoughts?

1 comment:

Interesting. I only said on my blog the other day that most of my art processes tend to be low-tech - drawing, printmaking, sewing by hand etc. I tend to be preoccupied with texture and that's not so easy to create digitally. As to women pioneering new technologies, it has to be the way to go in terms of feminism, but I think I'm probably not alone in wanting to duck out of the responsibility and hand it on to more technically-minded women while I sit and make art by hand.

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About Me

Ele is a curator and artist exploring the relationship between social engagement and technology. This blog features the Open Source Embroidery project including the Embroidered Digital Commons and Html Patchwork. Ele is also Curator of the Nuclear Culture project.